NCAA March Madness: What are the chances of picking a perfect bracket?

Every year college basketball fans see their passion come to a climax in March as they attempt to will their respective teams into the NCAA Tournament. What they’re also doing - along with family and friends - is competing in bracket pools and challenges to see who can select the most winners across the course of 67 games. Of course, doing so is something that we have yet to see in all these years.

Picking the perfect bracket is almost impossible

Now, if you are even casually familiar with the process of picking brackets, then you will almost certainly know that it’s more or less impossible to do so. Consider for a moment that companies have offered millions in sweepstakes cash over the years to anyone who can manage to do it and still nobody has. Heck, even Warren Buffett himself once offered employees of his company, Berkshire Hathaway, the small sum of $1 billion, and still nobody was able to achieve the feat. To be clear, the closest anyone has ever come to picking a perfect bracket was 49 and that mark was hit back in 2019 by Gregg Nigl, a neuropsychologist based in Columbus Ohio.

So, the obvious question here is: ‘Why is it so hard to pick a perfect bracket?’ Perhaps the best answer to that question can be found in the analysis of Fowler College of Business lecturer Chris O’Byrne, an avid college sports fan and former options trader on Wall Street. When asked by San Diego State University Newscenter, O’Byrne offered up a look at the basic equation in play when it comes to picking a bracket i.e., the odds. For starters, one has to consider that the chances of selecting a flawless bracket are 1 in 2 to the 67th power, or 1 in 147,573,952,589,676,412,928, or better yet, about 147 quintillion.

To put this in perspective, let’s take a look at Fairleigh Dickinson in last year’s tournament. Ranked 16th at the time, few could have imagined that the Knights would beat No. 1 ranked Purdue last March, but that’s what they did. Where facts and figures are concerned, across the first 139 games played between the No. 1 and No. 16 seeds, the No. 1 seed won. That’s to say, a record of 0-139. So, again, if we speak purely about probability, that amounts to roughly 0.714% or if you prefer 1 out of 140 and that’s probably too high, but the point remains: The chances were slim.

This of course brings us to the tale of Roll Tide Willie - you can see him above - who managed to keep his bracket perfect all the way to the Final Four game between Alabama and UConn. As you now know, the latter will face Purdue in the College Basketball Championship game after defeating Alabama 86-72, marking the team’s second consecutive trip to the big game. To be clear, Willie - a self-proclaimed Alabama superfan - filled a bracket that did not include any of the Crimson Tide’s opponents in the second round, Sweet 16, Elite Eight, Final Four or national championship, but rather that Alabama would simply win all of those games. In that sense his bracket wasn’t exactly ‘perfect’, however, we can respect the fact that he picked his team to go far and they certainly did. As for what comes next, tip off in the Championship Game between UConn and Purdue is set for 9.20 p.m. ET / 6.20 p.m. PT. at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on Monday, April 8th, 2024. Don’t miss it!